Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Republicans

Another Progressive pundit clueless on the effect of unemployment on elections

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On May 11, 2010

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Um, dude, no, Boehner is right, and you’re wrong, when it comes to the real world (h/t Cujo)

That was odd, wasn’t it? The disconnect makes it seem as if GOP talking points are lacking in flexibility, unable to adapt to changing circumstances. When the economy was losing jobs every month, Boehner would say, “Where are the jobs?” Now that the economy has added more than 200,000 jobs in two consecutive months for the first time in four years, Boehner is still saying, “Where are the jobs?” It suggests the would-be Speaker isn’t paying attention to current events very well.

When The Economy Interferes With An Election Strategy

Ok, depending on how you count it, the economy needs to add about 140K to 150K jobs JUST to keep up with increases in the population.  About 8.4 million jobs were lost in the last recession.  At a rate of, say 250,000 jobs/month, it will take 7 years to both put everyone back to work, and to sop up population increases.

For people in the ordinary economy “where are the jobs?” is a perfectly valid question, and it is a perfectly valid election strategy, because even if the economy starts regularly producing jobs at over 300,000, when November rolls around, the vast majority of people who need a job, still won’t have one.

Here’s my prediction: as a percentage of population, employment will not recover before the next recession.  80%+ of all productivity increases will go to corporate profits, and wages will stagnate.

Boehner is right to ask “where are the jobs?”  Both as a matter of fact, because there aren’t enough jobs, and as a matter of electoral strategy.

An optimist and a damned fool are the same thing

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On January 20, 2010

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Back in April I noted that the fools (and yes, they were fools) who kept mocking the right for being dead, and believing their own propaganda, were full of it.

Enjoy mocking Republicans all you want, but in your cold hard calculating heart, take them very very seriously.

Of course, Huffington Post didn’t promote that piece, because back then those of us throwing the cold water of realism on the fevered delusions of Obamadom were out of favor.

So how’d that work out for the reality denying triumphalists?  Hmmm?

Mind you, Obama and the Democratic leadership screwed things up even faster than I, whom most people consider a pessimist, expected.  Leading me to conclude that the rule of Bush is now the rule of Obama.

“Obama is more incompetent than you think he is, even if you take this rule into account.”

Also, optimists and damn fools are the same thing, at least when it comes to analysis.  It may be good for your health to be unrealistic about the future, but it makes you bloody lousy at predicting the future.  Thinking back to major analytical mistakes I’ve made in the last 5 years, only two of them were due to negative expectations, and one of those was actually optimism in pessimism drag: I thought the Fed would not be so foolish as to keep the housing and financial bubbles going for as long as they did.

My grandmother told me that an optimist and a damn fool were the same thing when I was 5, and so far nobody has ever shown me otherwise.  Lord knows, Obama isn’t going to, and neither are any of his Obots.

Pessimism is usually, actually, realism.  Because most people have an optimistic bias.  Their optimism feeds them the delusions they need to get through their lives.

With Friends Like Democratic Congresspeople

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On December 24, 2009

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Well, well, well.  It turns out that Acorn broke no laws.  None.  In the last five years.

But the Democratic Congress still threw them under the bus, with an illegal bill of attainder, banning them from receiving any government money.  Very similar to how they censured MoveOn for daring to challenge Petraeus.

Can you imagine the Republicans doing the same?  When the Swift Boat Vets lied repeatedly about John Kerry, did the Republicans vote to censure them?

And for that matter, did Dems try and censure the Swift Boat Vets?

Democrats constantly throw their own supporters to the wolves.  It’s one of the reasons there is little real loyalty on the left.  On the right, someone may occasionally have to take a bullet for the team, but afterwards they’re well taken care of and even rehabilitated if possible.  And major conservative organizations aren’t repudiated, nor do Republican leaders generally speak of “conservatives” with the sort of contempt that Democratic leaders reserve for liberals and progressives.

Democratic Congresspeople, as a group are weak people without strategic sense or the ability to bargain.  The exceptions, the strong ones, are unfortunately mostly conservadems – Republicans in drag like Ben Nelson.

If 40% of Dems are thinking of not voting in 2010 it’s exactly because Democrats won’t stand up for their own base.  For their own people and what those people believe in and need.  They only stand up for Pharma, banks, insurance companies and other entrenched powers.

Loyalty.  It’s a two way street.  And neither the White House, nor Congress, have shown any.

Parliamentary Politics in a non Parliamentary System

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On December 12, 2009

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Yglesias begins to get it:

We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking. Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power. But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.

I’ve been explaining this for going on five years.  The first time I tried to explain parliamentary politics to Americans was after the 2004 election (sadly, gone with BOP’s archives).  The most recent was in July, where I pointed out that without the possibility of snap elections, the US form is particularly virulent:

Now in parliamentary systems a majority government just does what it likes, and the opposition reflexively opposes but can’t stop anything.  In a minority government, the opposition can’t just stop everything because if it defeats the government on the wrong vote it’ll cause an election and you don’t want one of those till you’re sure you’ll win and the governing party won’t get a majority.  So the government can still get through a fair bit of its agenda, even if it doesn’t have a parliamentary majority.

In the US there’s no threat of a snap election, and the opposition can often hold up significant legislation, especially in a case like the current one where the governing party has unreliable members (something that’s very rare in most parliamentary systems).

So the Republicans have taken parliamentary opposition one step further.  Instead of just opposing everything but letting it pass, then running against it, they figure why not oppose everything in the hopes of weakening policy to the point where it doesn’t work?  The stimulus bill was compromised to the point where it didn’t do the necessary job.  The global warming bill likewise, and the health care bill appears headed for the same fate.

Lousy policy leads to lousy outcomes. Lousy outcomes make the population unhappy, and less likely to vote the incumbents back in.

What the Republicans are doing makes perfect sense from an electoral point of view.  Voters are not going to primarily blame Republicans for Democrats failing to govern effectively.

This is something that many Democrats, especially older ones who came from a more genteel era, or those who some sort of strange genetic disposition to compromise (Obama) don’t seem to get.  But Republicans get it in their limbic system.

Learn it.  Live it.

Republicans Now More Trusted than Democrats on Every Issue

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On October 27, 2009

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According to Rasmussen polling:

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

Granted that this is Rasmussen, not the most credible source.  But as they note, even they haven’t found this much Republican lean in years.

  • 49 to 35% on economic issues
  • 54 to 31% on national security
  • 50 to 31% on Iraq
  • 33 to 29% on government ethics
  • 46% to 40 on health care
  • 50% to 35% on taxes
  • 43% to 38% on eductation
  • 45% to 37% on Social Security?

Etc…  Oh, and on healthcare?

Separate polling released today shows 49% of voters nationwide say that passing no health care reform bill this year would be better than passing the plan currently working its way through Congress.

Trying to pass an unclear dog’s breakfast, easily demonized, instead of something clear, has had its cost.

And it takes real talent to be less trusted on social security, considering Bush tried to privatize it not so long ago.

On the generic Congressional ballot, Republicans are now favored 42% to 37%.  No wonder the Democratic Congress is becoming less and less willing to follow Obama’s lead.  He may not have to face voters till 2012, most of them will be staring down the barrel of voter discontent in 2010.

But the worst number is this: 73% of GOP voters nationwide think Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their voting base.

In other words, Democrats are right.  Republicans aren’t trusted.  It’s just that Democrats are trusted even less.

Trust is earned.  By making the economy work for banks and not for Americans; by refusing to put through a clean health care bill; by repeatedly not coming through on campaign promises and by not providing a clear alternative to Republicans, Democrats have lost the trust of Americans.

If Democrats want to turn this around they should simply start doing what they should have always done.  Break up the big banks, institute real bankruptcy reform and other help for real Americans, pass a medicare-for-all bill, get out of Afghanistan and push through a real and effective stimulus bill immediately paid  for it with a tax on America’s rich.

If not, as I’ve been saying for some time, they will pay a heavy price in 2010.  Americans expect results for them, not mealy mouthed platitudes, trillions for the rich and broken promises.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

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On April 13, 2009

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Dave Johnson’s got an excellent piece up in which he points out that laughing at the right is stupid. They’re doing now exactly what they did to Clinton in the 90’s, and it worked then.

In fact they’re back to being as crazy and paranoid as they were when Clinton was President. Remember the accusations that Clinton and Hillary were murderers, that Hillary personally killed Vince Foster, that Clinton ran a drug-smuggling operation out of an airstrip, that he was looking through FBI files, that he fired the travel office to put a cousin in, that he “sold” plots in Arlington cemetery, that he held up runway traffic to get a $500 haircut, that he used cocaine in the White House, that he hung obscene ornaments on the White House Christmas tree and the other fabrications that came daily?

We laughed then, too, and how did that work out? They took over the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they started wars. They tortured people. They appointed corporate lobbyists to run every agency. They filled the courts with Federalist Society judges that rule for the corporations and religious right every time. They stole billions…

Let me add two more facts:

  1. For ordinary people, the economy is never going to fully recover, ever (well, not in the next 4 years anyway). The administration’s own numbers show this, with an overoptimistic model that assumes tax cuts will have the average effect of the last thirty years, rather than the effect they had when Bush did them (a big fat flop). But even if you don’t think they’re overoptimistic, it doesn’t matter. Again, their own numbers show employment will not recover before the next recession.
  2. Obama and co. are doing a huge giveaway to the richest people in America.  By the time they’re done it will probably be as large or larger  than anything Bush did. Since it will not work in the sense of helping ordinary people enough, it will be used by Republicans to fuel populist rage. Sure, that’s hypocritical, but does that matter? We all know it doesn’t.

So I’m with Dave.  Enjoy mocking Republicans all you want, but in your cold hard calculating heart, take them very very seriously.

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